


Like Oil in Water

by ermengarde



Category: Bandom, Mindless Self Indulgence (Band), My Chemical Romance
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: For the prompt: Lindsey Way/Gerard Way: What happens when Gerard finds out about her secret?
Relationships: Lindsey Ballato/Gerard Way
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23
Collections: No Tags Fall 2019





	Like Oil in Water

**Author's Note:**

> Dear the mods: You are fabulous humans and I am generally delighted in your existence.

Lindsey is usually a pretty in your face kind of a person, someone who's always gone after what she wanted, even when it terrified her, but that doesn't mean that people really know her. They know the image she's created, the faux school uniforms, the fire breathing antics, the slash of red like warpaint across her mouth, but even when someone knows everything that she's gone after, knows what she'd order in a diner or prefer to find in the cooler at a party, she knows they don't really know _her_.

She thinks the people she went to Pratt with probably know her best, she's always had bleed over of herself into her art, but she's gotten better at obfuscation, at hiding things behind layers of meaning that people can't peel back all the way. 

She's had lovers who've gotten close, when she's been close to giving over her whole self to someone, but she's always held back, just a little. But now..... but now there's this boy, and if you'd asked her she'd never have thought it would be a boy, this boy who she _wants_ to know the whole of her. 

It's terrifying.

Lindsey doubles down, pulls on her stage persona like a mask and keeps it there, fabulous and terrifying and tough, impenetrably LynZ, 24x7, but that makes him pull back, makes him look hurt and scared, and that catches under her skin and makes her want to rip off all her masks and just be... Lindsey, stripped bare. It makes her feel like she can hardly breathe.

She calls her aunt. She never calls Lucinda, but she's kept her number close for years, kept it safe and known that one day she might want to reach out for her aunt's advice. Or permission. Dialing the number makes the bile rise in her throat. Lindsey had left all of this behind her, too many years ago. "Hi Luci."

_"Lindsey. I wondered when you'd call."_ Lucinda sounds exactly the same and in the middle of Lindsey's fear, something unknots. Lucinda will know what she should do.

"Yeah... I... uhhh.."

_"You met a boy."_ Lucinda says, wryly. _"And now you want to know how to tell him that you're not quite what he thinks you are."_

"Yes." Lindsey feels all of five years old, scuffs her toe on the carpet like the time she asked why she couldn't just tell her school friends. 

_"Just tell him. Show him. He won't betray us, I've done the scrying and I've set an invocation. You are free to tell the man that you love what you are."_

The line goes dead and Lindsey cannot hold back the sob that bubbles up in her throat.

This country is so damn big, miles and miles and miles of space in the middle, so far from any sea that they may as well be on the moon, but eventually they make it to a coast, make it to her boy's home near a busy, dirty shoreline that talks of too many people, too much industry and not enough care. It's the same in so many place now, people don't take care of the world around them as well as they should, but still... Lindsey can taste the salt in the air and feel the sea air on her skin and when she takes him by the hand and pulls him away from everyone, away from his family, and down to the sea, he laughs with her, picking up on her giddy excitement to be so close.

She takes a deep breath, to steady herself, fills her lungs with the scent of home. 

"Promise not to run?" She asks him, her excitement souring at the edges with the pollutant sting of fear.

"Uh, sure... Linds..?" He sounds worried and tries to pull her close, but she lets go of his hand, steps back, away. She can't look at his face, not for this.

She pulls her skin from where it's been tied around her waist, runs it through her fingers, wraps it 'round her shoulders. The water is _so_ close and even if he runs and screams and sells a million pictures to the tabloids, she can't stay away any longer. 

The water feels so good, even with the taint of oil and pollution. It's clearer towards the bottom - there are things rotting on the seafloor, carcasses of cars and shopping carts and other, darker things, but the water there is colder and clearer than higher up. It's almost like the water at home, the sea she's not seen since she was a little girl, tiny, swimming with her family. You can't cry underwater, a seal's eyes look liquid soft but they can't shed tears, but still, a wave of homesickness rolls over her and she knows it's time to go back up, time to face what she's left onshore, to see if she still has her boy, or if she's only got terror and fear and the burning times. She doesn't want to go... whilst she's down in the deep safe dark she doesn't know that he's betrayed her, doesn't know that Lucinda was wrong, doesn't have to accept that she was banking everything on his understanding and his acceptance of her and doesn't need to admit that if, _when_ he's gone, he'll be pulling her heart out of her chest and taking it with him. 

He is still waiting when she surfaces, when she sheds her skin and turns back into a version of the girl he knows. His eyes are huge, but he is looking at her with something closer to wonder than terror. 

"Uhh.." He swallows, audibly.

"I'm a Selkie, Gee. A... "

"A seal shapeshifter." Gerard nods, earnestly. "I've read about...."

Lindsey stops him. Puts a finger over his mouth and he doesn't flinch, even though they're still slightly webbed. She's been away from the sea for too long. "I don't know what you've read but it's probably not entirely......"

He laughs. "Some of it was porn."

She laughs, too. "I guess I should probably educate you."

He looks at her, slyly. "Can some of it still be porn..?"


End file.
